


Limpid

by thorinoakenbutt



Series: FFXIVWrite2020 prompts [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Crystal Tower Questline (Final Fantasy XIV), M/M, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Pre-Relationship, White Mage Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), flirting in the form of friendly teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26517781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorinoakenbutt/pseuds/thorinoakenbutt
Summary: Definition of limpid1: marked by transparency2: clear and simple in style3: absolutely serene and untroubledSynonyms: clear, crystal, crystal clear, crystalline, liquid, lucent, pellucid, see-through, transparent
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: FFXIVWrite2020 prompts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918291
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Limpid

**Author's Note:**

> A free day! I just looked at Webster Dictionary's word of the day on their website and here we are!

Limpid was perhaps too crude sounding a word, G’raha Tia thought. Crystalline felt a little too on the nose for where they were. Perhaps lucent? The Warrior of Light sat across the fire from him at their camp in Mor Dhona, caught in an animated discussion with Biggs and Wedge. G’raha tilted his head to the side as he regarded the way the light from the flames danced across the hero’s features. He didn’t care enough to pay too close attention to their conversation, caught up in his task as he was. 

G’raha’s brows furrowed further in thought. His poet’s heart yearned to find a suitable description to put to the Warrior’s appearance in his account of their expedition, but he was stumped on how best to describe his eyes. They had caught G’raha’s attention when they officially met, after the wild chase he’d led the hero on. Heterochromia, just as G’raha himself had. Though where his were cyan blue and Allagan red, the Warrior’s were a deep, honeyed brown and a very pale blue. Striking, yet disconcerting when one was the sole focus of their attention. 

Those very eyes found him over the fire and E’andhris grinned at him, making his heart skip a beat. Hopefully he wasn’t too transparent in his ogling of the famous adventurer. “You know, G’raha, my mother always told me that if I made faces like that when the wind changed, I’d get stuck that way.” Biggs and Wedge both laughed, and the redhead’s tail fluffed up in irritation. With the way E’andhris’ eyes narrowed at him, the motion wasn’t missed. 

“Haha,” G’raha replied sarcastically. “Don’t mind me, I’m just struggling to summarize our findings for the day.” The lie came easily to his lips, though he hoped it sounded believable. With an overly dramatic sigh, he closed his notebook and dropped it to the ground beside him before hunching closer to the fire. 

E’andhris gave an apologetic smile then, his thin tail flicking before it curled around his side. “I’d offer to help, but I can barely keep up with all of you intellectual types as it stands,” he joked, drawing up one of his knees to rest an arm across it. “I’m just here to beat things with my stick when they get too rowdy.”

G’raha laughed more honestly then, eyeing the staff that laid next to the other miqo’te’s outstretched leg. “It is _much_ appreciated by all of us, I can assure you,” he said, and wanted to smack himself for how damned earnest he sounded. The savior of Eorzea was so casual in his demeanor that it was hard not to respond in kind and make a fool of himself. 

“Ah, speaking of duties...Biggs and I should head to find the Chief to debrief before he goes to bed for the night,” Wedge sighed. He rose to his feet and gave both seekers a little wave as he left. Biggs clapped a heavy hand on E’andhris’ back companionably as he followed, the force of which knocked the mage forward. G’raha lurched to catch him, his face heating as he realized that the Warrior was able to regain balance all on his own. He awkwardly withdrew his hands, biting his lip hard.

To his credit, E’andhris looked more embarrassed with himself, if anything. “I’m alright,” he said too quickly, and brushed his hands off from where he’d braced them against the crystallized ground. G’raha saw that his palms were scraped and turned to pull out bandages from his pack when he noticed a soft blue light emanating from E’andhris’ fingers. Fascinated, he paused and watched as the small cuts closed up, leaving the skin smooth and unblemished. 

“That must be handy,” G’raha breathed in an impressed tone. Not that it was hard, he was rubbish with magic himself. But it was no mere conjurer who sat with him, but a white mage! The only one who wasn’t a padjal of the Shroud, from what G’raha had read. E’andhris truly was a rarity in every sense. He shook his head to try to steer his thoughts away from such blatant hero worship. “So! What leads a strapping young tia away from his people into the life of adventure?”

E’andhris pinned him with an amused look, and G’raha cursed himself. _Strapping_? It was true, but that doesn’t mean every thought that came into his head must needs be spoken aloud. The Warrior leaned forward to stoke the slowly dying fire with a thoughtful look, though he finally spoke before G’raha could die from embarrassment. “I could ask you the same question, G’raha _Tia_ ,” he said sardonically, smirking at the way the shorter seeker squirmed. “But a fair question. I just didn’t feel as though I had a future there with them.”

“Oh?” G’raha could understand that. He’d left his own family for the Students of Baldesion, to seek his own fate, and now it had led him here. To Mor Dhona. To the Crystal Tower. “So a case of wanderlust, hm?”

The Warrior of Light regarded him for a long, uncomfortable moment in silence then. His head tilted and eyes shuttered off before they warmed again, with whatever internal struggle that lay behind them resolved. “That and I have no desire to become a nuhn. Women hold no interest for me, so...” he trailed off, shrugging. 

_Oh_. G’raha suddenly felt too hot beneath his clothes. “W-well, you’ve done well for yourself, Eikonslayer,” he said, already wincing as E’andhris made a face at the title. His tongue stuck out in a way that didn’t help G’raha’s current train of thought. “I assumed it would be better than ‘ _Savior of Eorzea_ ’, my apologies. Oh, what about ‘ _Imperial Nuisance_ ’?”

E’andhris burst into laughter at that, and G’raha felt a dangerous swell of pride. The Warrior lifted a hand to rub a stray tear that leaked from his blue eye, and then gave a soft sigh of contentment. “Ah, I like that one. I’ll have to remember it,” he said, grinning hard. 

“I will endeavor to remember to write it down in my records. Who knows, mayhap it will catch on,” G’raha suggested with an equally large and foolish smile. 

” _Please_ do, I’d much rather that one than the multitudes of other titles everyone seems so keen to pin to me. They begin to weigh heavily after a while,” E’andhris confessed. He stretched then, holding his arms above his head and twisting this way and that until his spine popped all the way down. “But I’m exhausted, so I’m off to bed. Perhaps you can share some stories of your own over breakfast tomorrow?”

G’raha’s ears stood straight up in his excitement. “ _Yes_! Of course, I’d love to,” he exclaimed, too loudly. His ears immediately pinned against his head, though E’andhris just chuffed a quiet laugh. As he passed G’raha by, his hand came to pat his head once, leaving the Sharlayan researcher stunned. 

Even after he’d gone to his own tent, sleep didn’t come easily to G’raha. His head was filled too full of thoughts of an odd-eyed mage with a smile that rivaled the Crystal Tower in its luminescence.


End file.
